Last Week in Boston Tech Deals
Ten Companies Raised Over $500M
Antitrust Scrutiny is Heating Up
A group of bipartisan house lawmakers are introducing legislation that they believe will “reign in the power of Big Tech.” A few interesting key points from the five bills being introduced:
Ending Platform Monopolies Act:
It would become illegal for a company with at least 50M monthly active users and a $600B market cap to own or operate businesses with “significant conflicts of interest.” If they’re in violation, they would be forced to divest these assets into separate businesses.
American Choice and Innovation Online Act:
It would become illegal for companies to give preference to their own products on their own platforms — fining them 30% of US annual revenue if they do so. Think Amazon Basics products, Apple-made apps, etc. It would also prohibit companies from blocking competitors from access to their platform’s services or using data collected on their services to fuel their own competing products.
Platform Competition and Opportunity Act:
Any M&A deal would be illegal if the acquisition target competes with the platform owned by the acquirer. Additionally, the burden of providing such proof will be shifted to the platforms, rather than the government.
Augmenting Compatibility & Competition by Enabling Service Switching Act:
It would mandate that dominant platforms maintain certain standards of interoperability with their data so it’s easier for consumers to switch to new platforms.
Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act:
It would raise the size of fees that large tech companies must pay to notify the FTC and Department of Antitrust of acquisitions, helping them raise money to cover larger investigatory work.
What if No One Controlled Big Tech?
I doubt what’s presented in its current form will become law, but antitrust traction is certainly heating up with support on both sides of the isle. One interesting take on the Big Tech breakup topic that I find myself revisiting often is Fred Wilson’s “Open Up Vs Break Up” post from 2019. He prefers that politicians start to think about transitioning monopolistic platforms into protocols rather than wastefully disassembling them. I’m not sure how this would work in practice with a trillion dollar business, but the idea of DAOs running our economy is quickly gaining traction.
Jack Dorsey has funded an independent team to explore making Twitter into an open standard that anyone can build on. Twitter would become a client of its own protocol, but anyone could fork off a new version with their own product philosophy. Their competitive advantage as a company would come from participants on the network freely deciding to continue to support it — similar to how hundreds of clones of Bitcoin exist, but BTC’s dominance reigns supreme. It gets a bit more complicated when thinking about how Amazon would open up its marketplace or Google with its many products, but I’m sure we’ll start to see discussions of both eventually.
Also:
Happy Monday
Stuff I’m Reading:
How Tiger Global Earned Its Stripes As The World’s Biggest Unicorn Hunter
Local VC was bored cooking dinner. Hours later, his twitter chat captured history
Inside the meteoric, chilled-out, totally paradoxical rise of Calm
Interesting thread on large investment firms rapidly buying up US housing
Valo Health to go public with Khosla Ventures blank check company
There’s a new vision for crypto, and it’s wildly different from bitcoin
Half of the pandemic’s unemployment money may have been stolen’
Boston Tech Financing Announcements:
RStudio 🖥️
RStudio, which develops open-source IDE for data science teams utilizing the R programming language, raised a massive $161.3M round per a new filing. This is their first publicly-disclosed financing since raising a $6.1M Series A led by General Catalyst back in 2013.
Aura 🛡️
Warburg Pincus just led a $150M Series E round into Aura, valuing the company at $1B. They provide all-in-one digital security service for consumers that includes antivirus and identity protection. The company has now raised about $450M and generated $220M in revenue in FY’20.
Forward Financing 💸
Revenue-based financing startup Forward Financing just closed a $250M credit facility led by one of its existing capital providers. They provide flexible financing solutions for SMBs with at least $10K in monthly revenue ranging from $5K to $300K.
Liteboxer 🥊
Hampton-NH and Boston-based Liteboxer just announced a $20M Series A led by Nimble Ventures, with participation from B. Riley VC, Raptor Group, and Will Ventures. Alongside companies like Hydrow and Whoop, Liteboxer is showing that Boston is shaping up to be a hub for consumer connected fitness. They provide a Peloton-like experience for boxing that charges users $30/mo for routines.
Punchbowl 🍹
Party planning startup Punchbowl just raised $5M from SG Credit Partners. Along with the funding announcement, they also disclosed the acquisition of online video production service VidHug to expand their offerings. Following the pandemic, they pivoted to greeting card offerings for businesses and families.
Qeepsake 📘
Qeepsake, which uses SMS technology to help families collect memories of children, just raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Punchbowl (mentioned above). Punchbowl CEO and Founder Matt Douglas will join its Board of Directors as Advisor-Observer. Qeepsake is similar to Punchbowl’s latest VidHug acquisition, which also helps users collect and share memorable videos. Back in March’20, I wrote about them raising $580K in funding.
Thiozen 🌋
Per a new filing, low-carbon hydrogen production company Thiozen has raised $3M. They use a new chemical process that converts hydrogen sulfide into hydrogen, which is apparently cheaper and produces less greenhouse gas emissions than existing methods.
Tiki 🔒
Uprise Partners just invested an undisclosed amount into data privacy startup Tiki. I wrote about the company in February when they were in the process of closing the round. Mike Audi, the CTO of Blustream, founded the personal data monetization company about a year ago alongside Uprise CTO Brian Gagnon. They take user data, anonymize it and package it together, then sell it to big corporations. All revenue from the sale goes back into the user’s pocket and Tiki collects a service fee on the transaction.
ISEE 🚚
ISEE, an MIT spin-off that builds autonomous yard trucks for shipping hubs, just raised an undisclosed amount from Maersk’s growth fund. The company retrofits autonomous vehicle sensors onto existing yard trucks to help organize them in massive shipyards.
Datacule 💾
Harvard i-Labs company Datacule just raised $400K according to a new filing. They’re developing a solution for digital data storage that reduces the cost and environmental impact of storing data.